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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28643568">Farewell</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thuri/pseuds/Thuri'>Thuri</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Minor Character Death, Not Beta Read, Past Abuse, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:54:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>572</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28643568</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thuri/pseuds/Thuri</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aang may have vanquished Ozai without bloodshed, but the Phoenix King didn’t long survive his defeat. Less than three years after Sozin’s comet had again faded from the sky, Ozai slipped away in his sleep, a death many would’ve considered all too peaceful an end.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Farewell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In which I project onto Zuko, poor boy. </p><p>Also, I haven't seen anything but the three seasons of ATLA, so I'm sure this isn't canon compliant.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Aang may have vanquished Ozai without bloodshed, but the Phoenix King didn’t long survive his defeat. Less than three years after Sozin’s comet had again faded from the sky, Ozai slipped away in his sleep, a death many would’ve considered all too peaceful an end.</p><p>Zuko had known it was coming. He still visited his father regularly, though the man had long since stopped acknowledging his presence in any way. But still Zuko had gone, had made the effort, and had watched the monster of his darkest nightmares gradually shrink and wither away, until only an empty husk remained.</p><p>And yet, when the news reached him of his father’s death, Zuko felt inside himself a small remnant of the child he’d been before his grandfather’s death, before Ozai had branded him, before his banishment, his search for the avatar, and his salvation, a small piece of himself who was still just a boy who wanted nothing more than to make his father proud.</p><p>The larger, older, more practical part of him was relieved--Ozai gone meant one less threat and rallying figure for a rebellion. It meant no more attempts to find and free him, it meant no more fearing that whatever Aang had done would somehow reverse itself, it meant that a great deal of Zuko’s worries and contingency plans could be discarded. </p><p>It meant some of his nastier nightmares could now, truly, never come to pass.</p><p>And yet…</p><p>For all his relief, all his pragmatism, all the sound reasons Zuko knew it was alright to be relieved--glad, even--the fact remained.</p><p>His father was dead.</p><p>There had, he knew, been no chance of a reconciliation. Not really. Azula may have finally begun to respond to his overtures, to heal from the wrongs done to her, but she had been hurt as surely as he had by their father. And while Ozai might’ve suffered at his own father’s hands, he had shown no desire to change, no willingness to admit his own faults, to atone for his deeds.</p><p>No indication he thought he’d done anything wrong in the first place.</p><p>Zuko had already known he would never truly make peace with the man, never have the kind of relationship Sokka did with Hakoda, never hear him express praise or affection or care. And Spirits knew Zuko didn’t ever <i>want</i> to be the type of person of whom Ozai would be proud in the first place. If anything, he’d prided himself on just how much his father hated the changes Zuko’d brought about since he’d taken the throne, how completely he’d started dismantling the legacy of his great-grandfather. </p><p>Zuko had known his father would never change, he had known his father would never love him, he had <em>known</em> it.</p><p>But now Ozai was dead, and Zuko could never be proven wrong.</p><p>And that last shred of hope, that last bit of the little boy who’d wanted nothing more than to make his dad happy, to make him proud, to feel his arms come around him and be told he’d done well...the last bit of that boy welled up inside him in a way it hadn’t in long years, bringing a lump to his throat and tears to his eyes.</p><p>His father had been no father to him at all, and now...now he never could be.</p><p>And for one last time, Zuko let himself wish things could have been different.</p>
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